In Rome, the 18th century Trevi Fountain is one of the most famous sites that travelers choose to visit. Millions of visitors flock to the Italian landmark every year to take photos and join in the tradition by tossing in a coin.

The legend comes from the Oscar-winning 1950s film "Three Coins in the Fountain": when one throws a coin into the fountain, he will return to the city again. If he throws two coins, he will meet his love; if three, he will get married. And finally, someone who throws four coins into the fountain, will become rich! But there is a certain way tourists should throw the coin according to tradition. They are supposed to put their right hand on their left shoulder!

Photo : pexels.com/chaitaastic

And maybe one coin doesn't seem like enough, but when it comes to thousands of coins every day, did you realize how much money tourists throw at it in total? In fact, the fountain fills up so quickly that workers in the city of Rome sweep its floor every night to collect the day's spoils.

In the early 2000s, more than $800,000 was extracted from the fountain. Now the figure has doubled and increased to $1.6 million. All the collected funds are donated to charities, including shelters for poor people. And this spectacular increase is due to the growth of the tourist flow and secondly, that the coins are collected daily by the municipal services and thus exclude thieves from grabbing tourists' coins during the night. 

Photo: unsplash.com/ackley5

As mentioned above, municipal workers clean the floor of the fountain every day to collect visitors' discarded coins, which are then cleaned, weighed, counted and delivered to Caritas, an international Catholic non-profit organization.